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I don't think there's much Boras could legally do about something that's spelled out in the CBA.

And since Lohse could have accepted the Cards' offer.

I suppose if this keeps happening to players then we could see a collusion case -- i.e. teams regularly passing on compensated FAs, forcing those FAs to accept the qualifying offers, sort of a free team option year. I could also see the rule being tweaked to say that it doesn't apply to players over a certain age or a certain level of service time. Lohse is 34 with 11 years of service time, he's not really the kind of guy you expect to get a qualifying offer and he's not really the kind of guy the rule is designed for.

Even w/ Kyle Lohse still waiting in free agency, [MLBPA chief] Weiner said the new qualifying offer system was mostly a success:

“It worked well in some respects and it didn’t work well in others. Reducing the number of players that carried direct compensation to nine from over 30 is a big improvement from our perspective. It’s not surprising that Hamilton didn’t have a problem, but maybe it’s surprising to you that Swisher didn’t have a problem or Upton or others.

"LaRoche got a good contract, but his market wasn’t what he expected it to be. Bourn got a good contract, but his market wasn’t what he expected it to be. Lohse essentially pitched like a No. 1 the last couple years and he’s still out there. That’s of concern.

"While neither us nor the commissioner’s office have any legal obligation to bargain over that issue over the term of the basic agreement, I don’t think it was the intention of either side that you would have a player and you’d have clubs that would be interested in securing that player and be happy paying that player his salary, but would be stopped from doing it by compensation. That really wasn’t the intention.

"I can’t promise you that we’re going to be able to rectify it, but I know there will be discussions. It’s mostly good, but that part of it hasn’t worked out the way that we expected.”